WHOCOUNTS project wins €1.5m ERC grant

The project will address noncoverage error to improve our conceptual, methodological and substantive understanding of poverty across Europe.

Dr Daniel Edmiston, Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, has secured a Starting Grant from the European Research Council to re-examine poverty across Europe.

Over a five-year period, the WHOCOUNTS project will develop and deploy cutting-edge datasets on the social groups often rendered invisible through official poverty statistics and policy evaluation in Europe. Whilst those living outside of private households are usually part of the inferential population in poverty debates, they are often missing from the population income surveys underpinning distributional analyses. Through novel analysis of hitherto fragmented data, WHOCOUNTS will address noncoverage error to improve our conceptual, methodological and substantive understanding of poverty across Europe.

Dr Edmiston is one of four hundred and eight researchers who have won this year’s prestigious European Research Council Starting Grants. This call attracted nearly 3,000 proposals and the funding awarded is worth €636 million in total as part of the Horizon Europe programme. Supported through grants worth up to €1.5 million each, this funding will enable Daniel and other scientists to build their own research teams and pursue cutting-edge research in their chosen field. Starting Grants are available to researchers of any nationality with 2-7 years of experience since completion of PhD.

Further details about the WHOCOUNTS project will be available when the project launches.